Human Trafficking Readings

Human Trafficking Readings

Sold Reading Passages

BEYOND THE HIMALAYAS

At dawn, our hut, perched high on the mountainside, is already torched with sunlight, while the village below remains cloaked in the mountain’s long purple shadow until midmorning.

By midday, the tawny fi elds will be dotted with the cheerful dresses of the women, red as the poinsettias that lace the windy footpaths. Napping babies will sway in wicker baskets, and lizards will sun themselves outside their holes.

In the evening, the brilliant yellow pumpkin blossoms will close, drunk on sunshine, while the milky-white jasmine flowers will open their slender throats and sip the chill Himalayan air. At night, low hearths will send up wispy curls of smoke fragrant with a dozen dinners, and darkness will clothe the land.

Except on nights when the moon is full. On those nights, the hillside and the valley below are bathed in a magical white light, the glow of the perpetual snow that blankets the mountaintops. On those nights I lie restless in the sleeping loft, wondering what the world is like beyond my mountain home.

A TRADE

The next morning my stepfather brings me to Bajai Sita's store. He is carrying Ama's empty firewood basket and yet he is wearing his vest, his watch and his best trousers.

"Lakshmi wants to go to work in the city," he tells her.

I feel myself grow taller with his words.

Bajai Sita regards me through little lizard eyes. "Is she a hard worker?" she asks.

"She needs a thrashing on occasion," my stepfather says, "but she is not as lazy as some."

My cheeks flame with indignation, but I say nothing.

"Are you willing to do whatever is asked of you?" she says.

I nod.

I will use a separate rag to wash the dishes, I want to tell her, and I will wait to take my meal until night.

"Yes," I say. "I will do as I am told."

She goes behind a curtain and returns with the stranger in the yellow dress.

The woman looks me over head to toe, then addresses my stepfather. "How much do you want for her?" she asks, her veil to her lips.

My stepfather squints. He takes in the costly fabric of the woman's dress, the baubles on her ears, the silver bangles on her wrist. "One thousand rupees," he says.

There are not that many rupees in the world! I cringe at his backwardness and pray this refined and lovely city woman does not laugh him out of the store.

Instead, she motions for him to step inside the back room with her. "She has no hips," I hear her say. "And she's plain as porridge. I'll give you five hundred."

I do not understand. I can carry a load of firewood so heavy it would put a man to shame, and my legs are sturdy enough to climb the mountain a dozen times in one day. What does it matter that I have no hips yet?

My stepfather says he knows the going rate for a young girl like me. "No less than eight hundred."

"I will give you half now and the rest when she has proved her worth," she says.

My stepfather grunts, and he and the woman return.

Bajai Sita unfurls a roll of rupee notes from her waistcloth.

My stepfather counts the money, then counts it again.

"Your family will get nothing, not one rupee, if you do not obey your new auntie," says Bajai Sita. "Do you understand?"

I don't. I don't understand at all. A great deal of money has just been paid for work I have not yet done. But I nod.

My stepfather counts the money one more time.

"Tell Ama I will make her proud," I say. "Tell her I'll be back for the next festival season."

But he has his eyes fixed on the wares in Bajai Sita's shelves. He is taking things and putting them in Ama's empty basket: a carton of cigarettes, a bag of sweets, chewing gum, a bottle of rice wine, and a new hat.

While he is busy haggling with Bajai Sita over a watch that has caught his eye, I place two things in the basket: a sweater for Ama and a coat for the baby.

It is a rich and happy day for our family, an 800-rupee day, a festive and auspicious day, and so I add one more thing for Ama: a costly treat that only the headman's wife can afford -- a bottle of Coca-Cola, the sweet drink that people say is like having tiny fireworks in your mouth.

My stepfather scowls, but he does not say anything. On any other day, he would not tolerate such defiance, especially from a mere girl.

But today, I am no mere girl.

SOLD

I'm wiping the makeup off my face when the dark-skinned girl comes in. "What do you think you're doing?" she says.

"I'm going home."

Her tear-shaped eyes grow dark.

"There is a mistake," I tell her. "I'm here to work as a maid for a rich lady."

"Is that what you were told?"

Then Mumtaz arrives at the door, huffing, her mango face pink with anger.

"What do you think you're doing?" she says.

"Leaving," I say. "I'm going home."

Mumtaz laughs. "Home?" she says. "And how would you get there?"

I don't know.

"Do you know the way home?" she says. "Do you have money for the train? Do you speak the language here? Do you even have any idea where you are?"

My heart is pounding like the drumming of a monsoon rain, and my shoulders are shaking as if I had a great chill.

"You ignorant hill girl," she says. "You don't know anything. Do you?"

I wrap my arms around myself and grip with all my might. But the trembling will not stop.

"Well, then," Mumtaz says, pulling her record book out from her waistcloth. "Let me explain it to you."

"You belong to me," she says. "And I paid a pretty sum for you, too." She opens to a page in her book and points to the notation for 10,000 rupees.

"You will take men to your room," she says. "And do whatever they ask of you. You will work here, like the other girls, until your debt is paid off."

My head is spinning now, but I see only one thing: the number in her book. It warps and blurs, then fractures into bits that swim before my eyes.I blink back the tears in my eyes. I ball my hands into fists. I will not do this dirty business. I will wait until dark and escape from Mumtaz and her Happiness House.

"Shahanna!" Mumtaz snaps her fingers and the dark-skinned girl hands her a pair of scissors.

This Shahanna leans close and whispers to me, "It will go easier on you if you hold still."

There is a slicing sound, and a clump of my hair falls to the floor. I cry out and try to break free, but Shahanna has hold of me.

Mumtaz draws back, the jaw of the scissors poised at my neck. "Hold still," she says, her teeth clenched. "Or I'll slice your throat."

I look at Shahanna. Her eyes are wide with fear.

I stay very still, looking at the girl in the silver glass. Soon she has the shorn head of a disgraced woman and a face of stone.

"Try to escape with that head of hair," Mumtaz says, "and they'll bring you right back here."

And then they are gone, leaving me alone in the locked-in room.

I pound on the door.
I howl like an animal.
I pray.
I pace the room.
I kick the door.

But I do not cry.

THREE DAYS AND THREE NIGHTS

Each day, a thousand people pass below my window. Children on their way to school. Mothers hurrying home from the market. Rickshaw pullers, vegetable sellers, street sweepers and alms-seekers.

Not one looks up.

Each morning and evening Mumtaz comes, beats me with a leather strap, and locks the door behind her.

And each night, I dream that Ama and I are sitting outside our hut, looking down the mountain at the festival lights, and she is twining my hair into long dark braids.

WHAT'S LEFT

Tonight when Mumtaz comes to my room, she sees that her strap has left raw sores on my back and neck, my arms and legs.

So she hits me on the soles of my feet.

LUCKY TO BE WITH HABIB
A man with lips like a fish comes into my room and says, “You’re lucky to be with Habib.” He is squeezing my breast with his hand, like someone shopping for a melon. I try to push him away, but my arm, stone-heavy from the drugged lassi, doesn’t move.
“You’re lucky,” he says, “that Habib is your first one.”
I close my eyes. The room pitches this way and that.
“You can tell the others that it was Habib,” he says.
I open my eyes, watch him squeeze my other breast, and wonder: Who is this Habib he keeps talking about?
“If this is really your first time,” he says. “Old Mumtaz is a tricky one.”
He unbuckles his belt. “Once before, she sold Habib used goods.
The fish-lips man removes my dress.
I wait for myself to protest. But nothing happens.
“Habib,” he says. “Habib is good with the ladies.”
Then he is on top of me.

After a while, I don’t know how long,

another sound interrupts the rhythmic thud of the headboard.
I know this noise from somewhere.
I work very hard to make it out.
Finally, I identify it.
It is the muffled sound of sobbing.
Habib rolls off me.
Then I understand: I was the person crying.

HOW MUCH THEY ARE WORTH

They are old, young, dirty, clean, tall, short, dark, light, bearded, smooth, fat, thin.

They are all the same.

Most of them are from the city. A few are from my home country.

One day, a customer addressed his friend in my language as they left.
“How was yours?” he said. “Was she good?”

“It was great,” the other one said. “I wish I could do it again.”

“Me, too,” said the first one. “If only I had another thirty rupees.”

Thirty rupees.

That is the price of a bottle of Coca-Cola at Bajai Sita’s store.

That is what he paid for me.

AM I PRETTY?

I consider myself in the mirror.

My plain self, not the self-wearing lipstick and eyeliner and a filmy dress.
Sometimes I see a girl who is growing into womanhood.

Other days I see a girl growing old before her time.

It doesn’t matter of course. No one will ever want me now.

REPETITION

“Lakshmi,” I say to myself. “My name is Lakshmi.”

No one here says my name.

So I say it to myself. “My name is Lakshmi,” I repeat.

“I am from Nepal

I am thirteen.”

I am not sure, but I think so much time has passed that I am fourteen.

Author’s Note

“Each year, nearly 12,000 Nepali girls are sold by their families, intentionally or unwittingly, into a life of sexual slavery in the brothels of India. Worldwide, the U.S. State Department estimates that nearly half a million children are trafficked into the sex trade annually.

As part of my research for Sold, I traced the path that many Nepalese girls have taken — from remote villages to the red-light districts of Calcutta. I have also interviewed aid workers who rescue girls from brothels, provide them with medical care and job training, and who work to reintegrate them into society.

But most touching and inspiring was interviewing survivors themselves. These young women have experienced what many people would describe as unspeakable horrors. But they are speaking out — with great dignity.

Some go door-to-door in the country’s most isolated villages to explain what really happens to girls who leave home with strangers promising good jobs. Some of them—even women who are ill with HIV—patrol the border between Nepal and India on the lookout for young girls traveling without their parents. And some are facing their traffickers in court—where it is often their word against the fathers and brothers, husbands and uncles who sold them for as little as three hundred dollars.

It is in their honor that this book was written.”

Sex Trafficking in the U.S.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children states that there are 100,000-300,000 American born children likely to be victims of human trafficking each year. Although the victims’ backgrounds vary, the majority of sex trafficking victims come from broken or unstable homes and more than likely have a history of previous abuse.

Young girls are preyed upon by pimps who promise to love and take care of them, often deceiving the girls into believing they are actually their boyfriend. Girls with low self-esteem or who come from broken homes are more apt to respond to this type of love and attention and are duped into thinking the pimp cares about them. The pimp starts with physical abuse and psychological conditioning – then he tells the young girl she owes him money, and demands payment. Her only recourse is to sell (prostitute) herself, and he tells her she would do it if she really cared for him. Victims are subjected to starvation, being locked in rooms, forced to sleep outside in the middle of winter, inadequate clothing, severe beatings and emotional abuse.

Although sex trafficking is typically thought of as street prostitution, the leading avenue to market a girl has become the internet. Girls are forced to place multiple ads a day in order to make the pimp’s quota. Human trafficking has become the second most profitable crime in the world creating a $32 billion industry: more than Nike, Google and Starbucks combined. Pimps have found there is less risk in trafficking girls, and it is more lucrative than any other product because on average, girls can be sold for sex 15-30 times a day. If a girl does not produce the required amount of money for the pimp, she will be beaten and punished into submission.

Human Trafficking in Texas

• Texas has emerged as a hub for human trafficking. Trafficking in Texas flourishes due to proximity, demographics and economy.
• 100,000- 300,000 American children are likely victims of human trafficking in the United States compared to 17,500 international victims trafficked into the United States each year.
• Texas houses the I-10 corridor, which the Department of Justice designated as the number one route for human trafficking.
• In the last quarter of 2007, 30% of the calls received by the National Human Trafficking Hotline (888-3737-888) were out of Texas, and 25% of all reported victims, certified by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, were in Texas.
• Texas is home to two of the largest cities in the country, Houston and Dallas, where domestic trafficking thrives. This is due to the prevalence of runaway and “throwaway” youth, thriving sexually oriented businesses, and major sporting events and conventions that drive the demand for commercial sex.
• There are over 6,000 runaways in Houston and according to National Incidence Studies of Missing Abducted Runaway and Throwaway Children, an estimated 1 out of every 3 children who run away is lured into sex trafficking within 48 hours of leaving home.
• Research indicates that 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 10 boys will be sexually victimized before adulthood.

"Statistics - Arrow Child & Family Ministries." Arrow Child Family Ministries. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Jan.

2015.

Slave Labor in America Today

Foreign workers, lured by false promises of good jobs in America, soon find themselves enslaved in plain sight as victims of labor trafficking, according to a new report published by the nonpartisan Urban Institute and Northeastern University.

About half of these workers pay "recruitment" fees to traffickers -- often thousands of dollars -- that can leave them stuck in debt for years. And while some victims are smuggled here, a majority - or 71% - actually enter the United States with a visa, the report found.

The International Labour Organization estimates that there are roughly 21 million people worldwide who are victims of forced labor, but there are no official estimates of how prevalent labor trafficking is in the United States.

Urban Institute researchers found, however, that "there's a system in place to facilitate this exploitation." In some cases, U.S. employers "turn a blind eye to how workers are recruited; in other cases they were more intimately involved in fraud and coercion during the recruitment process," the report noted.

Funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, the report details the way in which victims get ensnared by labor traffickers and how difficult it is for them break free. Here's how it can happen.

The bait: Victims often hear about a job opportunity from someone they know in their home country. They then meet with a recruiter who is often from an employment agency seeking workers for U.S. employers.

The pitch: "Employment in America would offer them a unique opportunity at a better life for both themselves and their families," the report said.

In 93% of the cases that the Urban Institute reviewed, the recruiter misrepresented some key element of the job: the nature of the work, the hours, the benefits (health insurance, tuition, vacation) and the perks (e.g., free housing, or even legal permanent residence in the United States).